Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30

TWENTY-SIX

On the afternoon of the second day in St Petersburg the SIZO governors tour the activists’ cells, bringing with them a retinue of officials. When the door of Alex’s cell opens, Marina jumps to attention with a look of terror on her face.

Fifteen men file in, one after the other, prison guards and the head of the prison.

‘Do you have any problems?’ asks the governor.

‘No,’ says Alex. ‘I just want to go home.’

The man sniffs. He looks around. His eyes fall on the old woman. He walks over to Marina and starts asking her questions. She speaks quickly, he nods and makes some notes. The delegation leaves, the cell falls silent. Then Marina starts to weep.

‘What’s wrong?’ asks Alex, putting an arm around her. ‘Don’t cry Marina. What’s wrong?’

One of the other women, a young Russian, sits on the bed and puts a hand on Marina’s shoulder. ‘She cries because she’s been here two years. She asks for help many times and receives nothing. Then they visit you and for first time she speaks to governor. First time he knows who she is. First time they are nice to her. First time.’

In the other jails – Kresty and SIZO-4 – the activists are also being visited by the delegation of officials. An array of huge hats, immaculate uniforms and medals. There’s barely enough room for them in the cells.

They ask Dima, ‘How is it?’ and, ‘Is it okay?’ and, ‘Is it all to your liking?’

‘Apart from being in jail, it’s all fine.’

The men nod and pat each other on the back then stream out of the cell.

On day three, the activists are visited by the chief prosecutor of the St Petersburg region, accompanied by a colonel and a phalanx of junior officers. The head of the regional human rights commission brings up the rear with the head of the prison. In each cell the chief prosecutor asks the same questions.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Do you have any complaints?’

‘Are you satisfied with the conditions?’

And Roman tells them, ‘Every time, every day, you ask us this. Well, my answer is I don’t have any fucking complaints about the conditions, it’s not a sanatorium, the only complaint I have is that I’m here at all, together with my twenty-nine friends.’

Day Four. In each cell the door opens and in come two generals, a lieutenant general and a major general, accompanied by the chief prosecutor, the head of the prison and a clutch of civilians. One by one this collection of sharp suits and enormous hats – this gang that resembles the reviewing party at a Red Square May Day parade – files in and out of the activists’ cells.

One of the civilians appears to command the respect of the delegation. The man introduces himself to Dima. ‘My name is Fedotov. I am Vladimir Putin’s presidential adviser on human rights. My colleague here, the general, is head of the prison system for the Russian Federation, ministerial level. Do you have any complaints? Any questions? How are the conditions here? Oh, I see you have plenty of shelf space.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ Dima replies. ‘Actually, I do have a complaint.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, I’ve been jailed on trumped-up charges.’

‘Yes yes, very unfortunate. I understand your concern.’

‘The investigators tell me I’ll be here for many years.’

‘Oh really?’ Fedotov glances at the general, his bottom lip protrudes then he looks back at Dima. ‘And these investigators, did they tell you what the President says about your case?’

‘Actually, no, they didn’t.’

‘Do you think they’ve spoken to the President about your case?’

‘I suspect not.’

‘Well I have.’

‘And?’

Fedotov looks around the cell. ‘You have a lot of things in here. The conditions here are good.’ Then he turns on his heels and walks out, a long trail of uniforms and suits following him, until they have all left and the cell door slams shut. Vasily looks at Dima, his mouth wide open. And he says, ‘Who next in our little home? Putin?’

The legal team by now has a new lead lawyer, Andrey Suchkov, a criminal litigator experienced in running successful legal strategies that are inconvenient to powerful interests. His first move on taking over is to establish a line of communication with the lead investigator, and through that channel he soon learns devastating news.

Mads Christensen comes on the video link to address the core team. He looks tired. He lifts his glasses and rubs his eyes.

‘Okay everybody, listen up. I’ve got some bad news. This new lawyer we’ve got, he’s found something out, and… look, it’s bad, okay.’

The teams in Moscow, London and Amsterdam share concerned glances.

‘This lawyer’s been speaking to the investigators,’ says Christensen. ‘They’ve told him that when the current detention period expires, they’re going to apply to keep them in prison. Another three months. Nobody’s getting out.’

Arms wrap around heads. Eyes well up.

‘Nooooo.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Shit shit shit.’

The Kremlin is doubling down. The campaign has failed.

Ben Ayliffe heads up a team that has organised hundreds of protests in dozens of cities. He’s run an operation that has energised people across the globe and signed up nearly two million people to the campaign. But now he’s slumped in his chair in the Room of Doom, shaking his head. ‘What are we actually doing here?’ he mumbles. ‘Was all this for nothing?’

For families and campaigners around the world the news hits like a hammer. The Arctic 30 are nine days out from the end of the current two-month detention period, the ruling of the ITLOS court is due around the same time, the campaign is a global phenomenon – world leaders, celebrities, newspapers and millions of people are lining up to demand freedom for the thirty. But now Putin has shrugged his shoulders and slammed the door.

In the Russian office the staff have been spied on, lied to, lied about and abused. They have been on the verge of being raided, shut down and arrested. Many of them have come under pressure from their families to quit the campaign, to resign from the organisation. They’re branded enemies of Putin now, with all that entails for themselves and their futures. But still they came, every morning, to battle the state media and the FSB and those claims that the Arctic 30 are agents of foreign intelligence agencies determined to undermine Russian economic development. And now they’re back where they started. No, worse, the position of the Kremlin has hardened. It feels like it’s all been a waste. All of it.

Mads Christensen is back on the video link, speaking to his core team. The mood is dark. He has to tell them something to convince them that the fight is not over, that there are still things they can do. ‘We need to increase the strain on the investigators,’ he says. ‘Something to make them totally fed up with this case. Something that makes them wish we’d just go away. This is a war of attrition and we’re more determined. And now we’ve got nothing left to lose.’

He says the legal team has been waiting for the right moment to apply for bail and land the investigators with a mountain of paperwork and a logistical nightmare, and since the charges were re-qualified there’s been a legal justification for doing it. Bail was refused back in Murmansk when they were accused of piracy, but that was two months ago, and now they’re charged with a less serious crime.

‘Bail is such a rare thing in Russia,’ Christensen tells his team. ‘It almost never happens. I want to caution you all, this is a long shot. But if we do it we’ll cause the Russians a real headache. We’ll make them bring everyone to court and defend the arrest and the charges all over again. We need to grind them down. We’ll have to offer a bond and it’ll need to be a high figure, so the courts can’t say we’re not serious. But I think we should do it. We’re going to apply for bail.’

There is a calendar in the Room of Doom that takes up an entire wall. Key upcoming moments are marked in red pen, and around the third week of November there is a riot of scarlet ink. The two-month detention period – handed down in Murmansk – expires on the twenty-fourth. On the twenty-second the ITLOS international court is set to rule on the Dutch application to have the crew released. In the days before that, the FSB will be applying for that three-month extension of detention. And now the Greenpeace lawyers will be piggybacking onto those hearings to apply for bail. The first case will be heard on 18 November.

Mads Christensen decides to offer two million roubles – fifty thousand euros – for every prisoner. But the figure is academic. Hardly anybody thinks the crew will actually get bail.

The news spreads through the SIZOs. The Investigative Committee is keeping them in jail. Sini is told by the Finnish consul, then she goes back to her cell, lies on her bunk and cries all day, cries until she’s so tired she drifts off to sleep with wet and red-raw eyes. She could have done three more months in Murmansk. She could have survived that, with the tapping on the pipe and the shouts over the wall at gulyat. But here in St Petersburg, where she has almost no contact with her friends, she’s not so sure she’ll make it.

Camila hears the news from her lawyer, but by now she feels strong. She feels like she’ll get through this, she knows she’ll survive. It means she’s going to spend Christmas here, and she’s going to spend the Argentine summer here. But she accepts that. Okay, shit, so it’s going to be three months more, she thinks. Whatever.

Frank is taken to the meeting room at Kresty, where two officials from the British consulate are waiting for him. They have books, copies of British newspapers and his favourite magazine, Private Eye. As Frank leafs through the pages of one of the books – it’s about English football – one of the consuls shifts in his seat and says awkwardly, ‘So they’ve applied to extend your detention. Another three months.’

Frank looks up. ‘What do you mean three months?’

‘You’re not getting out anytime soon. I’m sorry.’

Frank crumples, his shoulders slump, his chin drops and he stares at the ground between his boots. His mind races for a moment, it’s performing calculations, working out all the birthdays that are coming up, the ones he’s going to miss. His son’s fourteenth, his daughter’s seventeenth, his partner’s fiftieth, his mother’s ninetieth.

He wraps his arms around his head and bites his lip. He fucked up, he knows that now. It was never heroism. Bravado, maybe, but not heroism. He thought he was inside for doing the right thing, but now he feels reckless. Irresponsible. Selfish. All those missed birthdays.

The consul asks him something but he can’t speak. He can’t even see the man. All he can see are the faces of his kids.

The consul leans forward.

‘Frank,’ he says. ‘You have to listen to me.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I said, don’t you think it’s time for the apology?’

Frank blinks. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘We need to think about an apology.’

‘Apology?’

‘It’s time.’

‘Apologise to who?’

‘Come on, Frank. You know.’

‘Apologise to the FSB? To Putin?’ A spark of indignation fires up somewhere near the back of his skull. ‘Apologise to Putin? You have to be kidding me.’ He sits up straight. ‘What we did was right. It was fundamentally right.’ He bites his lip and shakes his head. ‘No way. I’ll do the time. I’ve got nothing to say sorry for. Nothing.’